


all that was lost is revealed

by akaparalian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Over the Garden Wall Fusion, Angst, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27311839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: Keith keeps the lantern lit.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	all that was lost is revealed

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween!

The Unknown is full of mysteries, full of the dark and the unexplainable and the miraculous. Among these things, feared by everyone who lives in the shadow of the trees, is the Beast; among these things, known by almost none and believed by even fewer, is the lantern, fueled by the oil of the edelwood trees, a dim yellow light even on the darkest of days.

The Beast tends to the edelwood, always seeking new saplings. And Keith keeps the lantern lit.

—

"Hello, Woodsman," Katie says, because though they're old friends, he no longer answers to any other name. It's unusual for him even to come into town like this; usually he keeps well to himself, carrying only his lantern and his axe and presumably sleeping, if indeed he actually does sleep, which she's not sure he does, curled up against the base of a tree somewhere deep in the woods.

He looks at her a little blankly; his lips curl up in a faint smile, but his eyes are flat and cold and hard, nothing like the warm, quietly joyful expression she used to see when he would come into town and visit her.

Of course, he never used to visit alone the way he does, and that's the obvious, unavoidable problem. 

She smiles back at him, sad and aching and trying to hide it, not that she really expects he'd notice, anyway. "I'll have to tell Matt you visited," she offers, hoping that, for whatever reason, the mention of her brother's name will have some effect that her own voice and face and presence haven't had. The Woodsman is barely recognizable as Keith; they're the same person, obviously they're the same person, it's not as though she thinks he truly became someone different overnight, but all the same, there's almost nothing to tie them together. He doesn't even really _look_ the same; he's thinner, his face carved out until it's barely bones, and he'd been thin enough to begin with. And there's something in the way he moves now — something hunted, and something haunted.

Katie shakes herself. That's a ridiculous thought. Of course he's haunted, in the colloquial sense — he's haunted by a great loss, as they all are. And of course he's haunted, in the sense that everyone living in the shadow of these woods is haunted — the Woodsman, Keith, is haunted as they all are, is stalked through waking and sleeping by the Beast. 

But there's not any more to it than that. He's still the same Keith, he's just... suffering. Lost. He's still just as human as her, as any of them.

"Did you come to get anything in particular?" she asks briskly, trying to put away that line of thinking altogether. More direct questions like that are usually the best way to get an answer out of Keith, anyway.

He blinks, then nods, his eyes dropping from her face as he turns to reach for the rucksack slung across his back. "A few supplies," he says quietly, and when he hands her a list, Katie takes it quickly. No lantern oil — she's never known him to need it. He must get it somewhere else, not from the shops in town. He gets most of his food elsewhere, too, living off the land; she wonders about eating things from the heart of the woods, wonders if maybe that isn't why he's become so gaunt, but he's always lived off the land one way or another. He only comes to town for things that he can't catch or gather or make himself, and so, she assumes, he must have some way of making or finding his own lantern oil. She'd kill to know how he does it — the thought of having some additional source of oil, something that everyone holds precious in the long winter months, is appealing for obvious reasons, and beyond even that, there's the much simpler desire just to _know_. Knowledge for knowledge's sake. She doesn't ask, though, because she has no illusions about the fact that Keith won't answer. He hardly speaks at all anymore, and the few times she's tried to ask him probing questions about the lantern, the woods, any of it, he's shut her down immediately. 

And, underneath that, there is a baser reason, which she hates to admit to. She casts a quick glance down at the lantern, and grudgingly acknowledges the feeling prickling at the base of her neck: something about it is, and has always been, deeply unsettling, as though something about it just doesn't quite belong.

Of course, she tells herself firmly, the rumors about it are just that — vicious, stupid rumors. They're ridiculous, she's never put any faith in them. Even now, looking the Woodsman dead in the face, feeling the odd shiver in her spine that seems to accompany him whenever he leaves the shadow of the trees, she tells herself that there's nothing odd about the lantern, not _really._ Anyone out in the woods at all hours would need a lantern to guide their way, after all.

"I'll get these for you," she says quickly, when she realizes that she's let the silence drag on too long, not that Keith seems to have noticed. He just blinks at her again, his expression entirely closed-off, and then nods, a short, sharp motion that's strangely more familiar than anything else about him. She almost smiles at the reminder, but turns away before he can see it; it wouldn't do for him to ask what she's smiling about. Besides, the grin is gone as quick as it had come, chased off by the cold breeze that catches her hair and makes her shudder as she leaves the Woodsman standing in the road and goes to do what little she can for him.

—

The Unknown is vast, and twisting, and full of more secrets than one could hope to learn in a dozen lifetimes. No one understands it, really, but Keith — Keith has learned more than most ever will.

He moves through the trees as silently as any shadow, as easily as the moonlight trickling down through the branches. Only a sliver of the moon is visible, though, and clouds blot out most all of the stars; the only real source of light, of warmth, is the lantern swinging at his side. 

Of course, that's all right, more than all right — the lantern is all he needs. It's all he'll ever need. He doesn't ever let it get farther than arm's reach, and just the thought of having it out of sight makes him tense up with horror. The lantern, after all, is his entire reason for wandering through these woods, for lingering under the shadows of the trees. Keith keeps the lantern lit. That is all there is, all there can be, anymore. For the lantern, he needs oil; for oil, he needs the wood, the edelwood, and so he's taken up this mantle, the role of Woodsman. But it all goes back to the lantern, everything he does, everything he is, for the lantern.

For Shiro.

—

"Keith came this afternoon," Katie says, after dinner, when they're all curled up by the fire in the main room. She says it casually, matter-of-factly, but really, she doesn't know who she's fooling. Matt freezes immediately, tenses, and her mother and father too; everyone knows, obviously, about the Woodsman, and who he was before he was the Woodsman. And about Shiro, who'd grown up here, practically a brother to Matt, to Katie.

"Oh yeah?" Matt says, just as fake-casual, with sorrow so obvious just under the surface of his voice that she almost winces. "Wish I'd known. I'd have liked to see him."

That's technically true — she knows her brother worries about Keith. They all do, and anyway, Matt and Keith had been friends, too, before everything. But at the same time, she knows that seeing Keith just reminds him of Shiro, and Matt gets this hollow look in his eyes whenever he sees Keith, or even, sometimes, just when he sees someone off in the distance who _could_ be Keith — someone moving through the woods in the dark by the light of a lantern, just on the edge of the Unknown.

Katie doesn't know why, doesn't know what it is about Keith that her brother knows that she doesn't, or if there's even anything so mysterious about it at all — it's far more likely after all, that this is just plain, familiar grief. Even in the Unknown, sometimes the simplest answer really is the truth. Regardless, though, she knows that she hates to see her brother look like that, and that if Keith were more himself, or if Shiro... if Shiro were still here, they'd hate to see it, too.

So she hadn't gone to get her brother this afternoon, even though she'd known where he'd be, with their father in his lab, and she'd gotten Keith his supplies, instead. And, now, she smiles a tiny, sad smile at Matt, and says, "Yeah, I'm sure he missed you, too."

—

There are days when the lantern feels heavier than others, days when the edelwood is too fresh, days when the snow is too thick or the woods too deep, and on those days, Keith only manages to keep struggling through the Unknown because of Shiro.

There's no one else in the world he'd do this for, as he's reminded himself many times, trekking through the forest with only his lantern and the little he can carry on his back, always, always searching for wood, for oil. Not for his parents, when he'd lost them, one and then the other. Not for any of the Holts, though he loves them just as dearly as he'd loved his mother and father. Not for any of his other friends, or anyone else he'd ever met. But Shiro — for Shiro, this, and anything else. 

On the best days, when there's warm autumn sunlight and old, long-forgotten wood, too old to remember what it had been before the forest, he can almost hear that warm, familiar voice in his ear. The press of the lantern in his hand could almost be the squeeze of Shiro's fingers, and the wind playing with the hair at the nape of his neck could be Shiro teasing him, making him flush high up on his cheeks even though there's no one around to see. But there aren't many of those days anymore. Maybe there never really had been; maybe he's been fooling himself all along. Maybe...

 _Keep walking, Keith,_ Shiro whispers, just out of sight, just over Keith's shoulder, if only he could turn to look. 

In the distance, far, far away, the Beast is singing.

—

"It can't be right, him wandering out there still, after all this time," Katie's mother murmurs, away in the kitchen where she thinks Katie and Matt can't hear her. "He's not hardly grown. And after everything that happened..."

There's a heavy pause, the sound of a dish clacking against the counter, almost drowned out by the rising wind outside. "What can we do about it _now_?"her father eventually replies, blunt, but so achingly sad that it almost makes sympathetic tears well up in Katie's own eyes. She scrubs them away angrily, but even as she does, she's looking at Matt. Her brother, after all, is the one they should be concerned with here — after Keith, of course. Katie had _liked_ Shiro and Keith, had loved talking with them and going out in the fields on clear nights and letting Shiro tell her about the stars and badgering Keith to teach her how to throw a knife, but Matt... Matt and Shiro had grown up closer than twins, and he'd been right there with Shiro in getting to know Keith back when he'd first turned up a decade ago, stumbling out of the woods like a long-legged fawn.

And Matt had also been there when Shiro died. Matt had been who Shiro died _for_. And while no one blamed Matt for Shiro's death — not even, to the best of her knowledge, Keith — Katie knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that her brother still blames himself. 

She's sure that he can hear their parents as well as she can, but if he's paying attention, he doesn't show it. His eyes are clouded over, dimmed, troubled. It hurts to see, almost as much as it hurts to see Keith's skeletal cheekbones or the windburn on his knuckles.

"Matt," she whispers, and he starts a little, looking at her almost guiltily. She doesn't say anything more, but she raises an eyebrow at him, her lips tipping downward in a frown.

He doesn't say anything at first, but he glances away and bites his lip, which is almost as telling, really. "I worry about him, too," he says, eventually. His voice is — resigned, wretched. It freezes the air in Katie's lungs. "But I don't — I don't think there's anything we can do. Not anymore."

That doesn't sound like Matt at all. Not at all. Her brother isn't one to give up on stupid little things, let alone on someone he loves the way they all love Keith, someone who'd been a dear friend since childhood, had been practically his brother-in-law. "What do you mean?" she asks, her heart thrumming a warning rhythm in her chest.

Once again, Matt pauses, but Katie manages to tamp down her impatience and fear and wait for him to answer in his own time — he _will_ answer, she's sure of it, she can see it in the twist of his mouth, the — the mourning, the grief. It looks, she realizes with dawning horror, like when Shiro had died, when he'd just died. It looks like all of that grief and loss all over again.

"What do you know about that lantern Keith carries?" Matt says, finally, and for once, Katie thinks this may be a question she doesn't want to find the answer to.

—

 _ **Woodsman,**_ the Beast says, echoing through the trees for what seems like miles around. Keith grits his teeth, hunches his shoulders, and ignores it.

But the Beast is old, and terrible, and not nearly so easily dissuaded.

 _ **Woodsman,** _it repeats, its voice so deep it rattles the trees and the sky and Keith's bones, all at once. It sounds remarkably like the low, warning thunder that has begun to rumble as the day wanes. _**You seem to be running low on oil. Have you had trouble finding the edelwood trees?**_

"Shut up," Keith hisses, despite himself; instantly, he regrets it, and the Beast's laughter echoes through the woods, gleefully vindictive.

 _ **Oh, Woodsman**_ , it says, its false sympathy cloying and repulsive. Keith bares his teeth, but doesn't speak again. _**Perhaps I should take the lantern, if you cannot keep it lit. Perhaps it would be better if I held it for a while.**_

"Shut _up!"_ Keith doesn't bother to even regret the outburst, this time, because _that_ he can't allow to stand; he clutches the lantern — clutches _Shiro_ — protectively to his chest. In the absence of the Beast's voice, its horrible chuckle, for just a fraction of an instant he instead hears Shiro's laughter, familiar and joyful and full of so much love, so much _light_.

He breathes heavily, staring into the woods, rapidly spinning on his heel as he tries to find the Beast. Those eyes, those horrible glowing eyes, why can't he find them? "Shut up," he says again, more quietly, hissing through his teeth. "You can't touch him. You can't touch him. I'll find the wood, I always have, just — leave, _leave_ —"

There's an abrupt shift in the air around him, and suddenly the moon seems brighter, the breeze marginally calmer and more friendly. The clouds have briefly parted, and the threat of a winter storm seems far away. The Beast is gone, leaving only an echo of laughter behind. 

"Shiro," Keith mutters, clutching the lantern to his chest as he falls to shaking knees. " _Shiro."_

—

Katie doesn't follow him — how could she? She doesn't have the slightest idea where Keith had gone when he'd left town this afternoon, just as the sun was sinking down into the tops of the trees. Well, all right, she'd seen him head off to the east, into the woods, but that was hardly enough knowledge to go haring off after him. He could be anywhere by now; he knows the woods so well it's frightening, he had even before he'd become the Woodsman. Katie's played in the sparse trees and low bushes around their home her whole life, but there's a world of difference between that and wandering into the darkness in the beginnings of what looks like it may be a harsh, sudden storm.

Still, she thinks, huddling by the last embers of the fire as the wind howls outside the shutters, everyone else already long since gone to bed, even Matt; there's no one to stop her from doing something stupid, like going after Keith. There is some part of her that _wants_ to go after him. She's, frankly, scared — horrified — both for Keith, and, just a little bit, _of_ him, too.

She hears it all over again, Matt's voice slightly choked and rasping and only barely audible over the wind, the two of them sitting there alone as the fire burns down: _Do you know how Shiro died?_

 _Yes_ , she'd said. _Of course I do_.

_You know how there wasn't a body?_

Bile rises up in her throat. It can't be true. It can't. She's only ever seen an edelwood tree once — they grow deeper in the woods than she's ever dared to go. When Katie was small, perhaps five or six, there had been a sapling, not far from town. Everyone had been disquieted by it, but no one had been able to explain why, and Katie hadn't been able to figure it out herself; all she'd known is that everyone seemed to feel the way she did, like looking at that little tree too long was dangerous. And yet no one had wanted to cut it down, either, even when the sickly black oil had started to leak from the bark, seeping into the ground with a sweet, dark, rotting smell.

Then, one night, there had been singing in the woods — a deep, haunting voice she hadn't recognized. And the next morning, the tree had been gone.

Her head spins. It hadn't been Keith who took that tree, of course; he'd just barely come to town then, he'd certainly been years and years from becoming the Woodsman. But _someone_ had. Someone had taken that edelwood tree and used the oil to fuel the lantern, but, if what Matt had told her was true... 

Someone had _been_ that edelwood tree, too. 

The idea is revolting, horrible. It also seems impossible, anathema to a sharp, logical mind like Katie's, but then, nothing is impossible in the Unknown. She's come to terms over the years with living in the shadow of the Beast; this, too, is within the realm of the Unknown, no matter how unreal it might seem to her now.

 _I was the one who found him_ , Matt had told her. In fact, that part he's told her many times; that part, everyone knows. After getting separated from him on a hunting trip, Matt had found Shiro, his best friend, dead, in the woods. Keith had been with him, barely alive himself. He'd been half-dead from the cold; it had taken him months to recover. But Shiro had been beyond saving, and faced with the choice of bringing one of them back, Matt had picked Keith. By the time anyone had been able to return for Shiro's body, it was gone, lost to the Unknown. 

But tonight Matt had told her something else, too, something more: _it was growing over him,_ out _of him._ No one will ever know exactly what had happened — even Keith was unconscious when Shiro died, or, at least, he claimed he hadn't been able to remember anything, once he'd recovered enough to speak on it at all. But Matt hadn't found a frigid body.

 _Those trees,_ he'd said, his voice cracking again. _I think they're all people. Like Shiro. People who died out there_.

And Katie had realized the next part before he could even say it, her thoughts leaping along to the conclusion even as her heart threatened to crawl right back out her throat. 

_And Keith_...

Keith is the Woodsman. Out there in the woods every day and night, searching for more of those horrible, horrible trees, cutting them down for their oil — oil that he used to burn that lantern, the Beast's lantern. 

_I don't know why,_ Matt whispered. _He wouldn't tell me why._

But Katie knows why. There's only one reason Keith would do something like that — because he knows, he _has_ to know, about the edelwood trees, about all of it. There's only one thing, one person, that would drive him to do that kind of thing, and — more than the woods, the storm, the dark, the Unknown — the reason Katie isn't going to go after him is that she doesn't know if she has the heart to try and get him to stop.

—

The storm has blocked out the light of the moon and the stars entirely, leaving only the lantern. Even that flickers in the wind, leaving Keith to hunch around it protectively as he huddles in the shadow of an enormous old oak. It works, for now — Shiro is safe, for now. But there is a sick dread in Keith's stomach which he cannot deny or avoid, a certainty that makes him curl around the lantern all the tighter, for all the good that'll do them.

There's no more oil. None at all — he used up the last of it only moments ago, and there's no way for him to get more in this weather, even if he could force his shaking limbs to move. The oil is gone, and that means that Shiro is going to die.

Snow whips against his cheeks, whirling through the woods in the gale, and he harshly scrubs his face against his sleeve. His head is spinning, but it's as though he's trying to think through several layers of dense fog. He can't just sit here. If he just sits here and gives up, then he's failed Shiro, and what was the point of all of this? He might as well have just turned the Beast down in the first place, when it had come to him on the night when he returned to the place where they'd — where Shiro had — 

He had taken the lantern then, and he can't let it go out now. He _can't_. But he has no idea what to do. Even if he could force his body to move, even if he could navigate the forest in a storm like this, he knows with bitter clarity that it likely wouldn't do him any good. The only reason he's run out of oil in the first place is that the edelwood trees have become harder and harder to find, not replenishing at a rate that's sufficient for his needs. Which is _good_ , and he feels sick for being upset about it, but — well. His fingers tighten around the lantern.

For a moment, he almost imagines that squeezing the lantern so tightly is making the world a little warmer, making the storm quiet and the winds still. Then he realizes that the storm really _has_ quieted — unnaturally so, and unnaturally quickly. He blinks his eyes open — when had he closed them, and why do his eyelashes seem so very hard to pry apart? — and, as he'd expected, finds himself met with the Beast's glowing white eyes.

 _ **Woodsman**_ , the Beast says in that voice, that horrible voice. Its tone is thick with false, mocking sympathy. _**This is no night to be out in the woods alone. Though, of course,**_ it adds after a moment, _**you are never alone, are you? He is with you always, just as I promised you.**_

"W—" Keith tries, but the words seem to shake right out of his mouth, slurring until they're all but incomprehensible. "Why— why're you—"

He blinks, squints, struggles to open his eyelids again. The Beast has been dogging his steps more and more and more as his supply of oil has dwindled, but twice in one day is — this is bad, very bad, bad enough that the shock of adrenaline allows Keith to force his shaking limbs into submission. Slowly, carefully, he sits up, and then shoves himself to his feet, always, always keeping the lantern in a white-knuckled grip and keeping his eyes focused solely on the Beast.

 _ **My dear Woodsman, I only ever want to help you,**_ the Beast says. It stays in the shadows, never stepping out of the trees; in the space between them, snowflakes hover in midair, frozen in place. It's as though time itself is holding its breath, waiting to see what the Beast will do. Waiting to see what it _wants_.

"You've never helped me," Keith says, baring his teeth. "Never once."

The Beast hums, its tone taking on a distinctly more dangerous edge. _**Oh?**_ it asks softly. _**But didn't I give you that lantern? Didn't I tell you how to keep your love safely inside, so that his soul can stay with you forever?**_

"You—" Keith starts to say, but the words choke him, his throat closing around his voice. He clutches the lantern to his stomach, his head spinning, as he wars with himself. He would do anything for Shiro, anything. He would trade his life for Shiro's a thousand times over.

 _But this isn't life that you've given him,_ a little voice whispers in the back of his head. _And what reason have you ever had to trust the Beast?_

He has carried this lantern for years. For — he doesn't even know how long, can't quite wrap his brain around the stretch of time since the last time he'd held Shiro, _really_ held him, the last time there'd been any more of him in the world than a smile in Keith's memories and a steadily burning lantern. In all that time, he's done nothing but wander through these cursed woods, taking the bodies of those who had fallen to the Unknown and grinding them into oil. For Shiro. All of it for Shiro.

But not _only_ for Shiro.

For the Beast, too.

"Why?" Keith whispers, his heart pounding in his ears. The word barely escapes his throat, but he's certain the Beast will hear. "Why did you do this to me? To Shiro? Why did you..."

 _ **Why, are you saying you would rather your Shiro be lost forever?**_ the Beast replies, all cruelty and mocking under the thinnest façade of surprise. _**My dear Woodsman, I thought you loved him. More than anything.**_

Fury forces Keith to stagger forward several steps. "I do!" he shouts, his voice cracking horribly in the middle of the phrase before falling back to a whisper. "I did. I — I do. But this — this isn't any kind of life. Trapped in a lantern, forever? I should have just... I should have just let him die. I... I should have..."

 _ **You could live in a world without him?**_ the Beast whispers.

"No," Keith says. "But I... I have been. All this time, I have been."

Slowly, so slowly, hands shaking all the way, he lifts the lantern up to eye level. Its flame gutters slightly even as he watches, even as he listens to that far-off echo of Shiro's laughter, even as he feels the familiar warmth, practically painful in contrast to the aching cold of this night. 

"No more," he says, or means to say, or thinks he says. Again, louder, more certain, even as tears prick at his eyes and freeze before they can reach his chin, even as he shakes with grief and fury and sick, mournful guilt: "No more. I won't — I won't do this anymore."

 _ **What?**_ the Beast shouts. Its voice drops several octaves, rumbling with all the power of the dark, of the Unknown. 

Keith wonders that he was ever afraid of it.

"I won't do this," he repeats, looking away from the lantern to glare at the Beast instead. Its eyes shine more brightly than the lantern now, eerily beautiful in the same way bones are once they've been picked clean. "I won't. Shiro — Shiro wouldn't want this."

He is admitting it to himself as much as he is telling it to the Beast. He closes his eyes for just a moment, letting even the light of the lantern fall away, and hears the Beast snarl into the night.

 _ **You would kill him all over again?**_ the Beast roars. It rushes for Keith, looming over him until its eyes are mere inches from his own. Its presence, from this close, is indescribably horrible, more terrifying than anything Keith has ever known — every inch of him, every instinct, is screaming at him to run, to get as far away as he can and not look back over his shoulder as he goes, lest he catch a glimpse of what's behind him. _**You would wipe him from existence forever?**_

"He's already dead," Keith tells it. He longs to shut his eyes again, out of fear and misery both, but he forces himself to keep them open, to meet the Beast's gaze head-on. "He's already _gone_ , Beast. This — what I've been doing — this is just... pretending."

 _ **Insolent fool!**_ it howls. _**I have guided you through the darkness, I have given you the means to keep your love alive, and yet you—**_

"No you haven't!" Keith shouts, staggering backward a step and colliding with a tree hard enough to knock snow from its branches. "No, you haven't, he isn't alive, he isn't _here_ — and anyway, why do you care, why does it matter to you if I let the light go out, why do you care if Shiro _does_ die— why do you —"

His words die out immediately as his thoughts come to a shrieking halt, his eyes widening with horror. No. No, surely he's wrong, surely he — in all this time, surely he would have realized. 

But then, of course he wouldn't. He's been too busy staring into the lantern all this time, longing for it to be Shiro, to even consider the thought that it might not be.

"It's you," he whispers. His breath rattles harshly through him. "Isn't it? In the lantern, it's not Shiro, it's— you're—"

The Beast shrieks, a wordless, primal sound that rattles in Keith's chest with the purest and most potent terror that he has ever felt. It's fighting to keep his eyes open in the snow, curled against Shiro's chest, knowing that if he lets himself rest that neither one of them will be there when he wakes; it's coming to in the Holts' house alone and knowing that something is terribly, terribly wrong; it's staring into the future at a life without Shiro, completely unable to imagine waking up every morning in a world without Shiro in it — it's all of these things at once, and each one suddenly, impossibly, ten times worse than it had been at the time.

But that fear isn't alone. It isn't the only feeling sinking its claws into him as the Beast looms above him, its eyes wide and haunting. 

_Shiro, I'm sorry,_ Keith thinks, and his heart swells with sorrow and love and a deep, protective fury as he swings the lantern as hard as he can.

He hadn't even been really certain that the Beast was corporeal, that it _could_ be hit — he'd been acting on pure instinct. But the lantern certainly collides with _something_ , and the Beast screams again, howling like the fiercest storm, bellowing like the darkest part of the night. Keith can't quite recover from his swing in time to prevent himself from being bowled over by a force that could be grasping arms or a gust of icy wind or simply a blow to the stomach, and he tumbles sideways into the snow, lantern still in hand.

He coughs and struggles to his elbows, looking around for the Beast. It looms over him, leaning closer and closer into the weak puddle of light still quivering out from the lantern; Keith nearly chokes in horror as it comes closer and closer, bile and terror rising up in his throat as the light catches on a writhing mass of things he can't quite parse — branches, or bones, or insects, or something else entirely, sick and gleaming in the light—

The light. The lantern. Keith glances down at it for the briefest instant, but then freezes, somehow distracted even from the monstrous thing looming above him. In his fall, the lantern's door has been bashed open. There's nothing protecting that little spark of light anymore, nothing at all.

 _I'm sorry_ , Keith thinks again, and just as the Beast shrieks _**NO!**_ , he throws himself to the side and blows the lantern out.

It's many long minutes before he can bring himself to open his eyes again. The storm has resumed its fury all around him, which is all the proof he needs that the Beast really is gone. But if the Beast is gone, then that means that the light is gone too — and no matter if it was really the Beast in the lantern all that time, he's thought of it as Shiro for so long that he doesn't know if he'll be able to bear opening his eyes and seeing the lantern empty and cold and dead.

But he has to know. He has to open his eyes just long enough to check, and then — well, then maybe he'll rest for a while.

Sure enough, when he eventually manages to pry his lashes apart once again, the lantern is sitting there as empty and innocent as can be. All around him, the snow is mussed and trampled, though the storm is doing its best to erase any evidence of his brief fight with the Beast. Slowly, so slowly — as the adrenaline of the fight starts to leave him, it seems harder and harder to convince his body to do anything — Keith reaches out one unsteady hand and closes it around the lantern. He knows it's only his imagination, of course, but as he draws it to his chest and curls himself around it, he almost thinks he feels a little flicker of familiar warmth from inside.

"Shiro," he croaks, and lets his eyes drift shut once again.

—

It takes Katie months of searching, but one afternoon in the early spring, she finally stumbles upon the right patch of woods.

She freezes as soon as the little clearing comes into sight, one arm shooting out to steady herself against a nearby tree. The breath seems stolen from her lungs, her heartbeat accelerating in her chest as every instinct screams at her that something terrible has left its mark here. It's not immediately clear _what_ , but she's learned enough about these woods in her efforts this past winter to know to listen to her instincts when they tell her something isn't right.

The clearing isn't, on first examination, anything special — it could be any anonymous patch of woods. There are fresh new sprouts just starting to poke up from the undergrowth, and buds just beginning to weigh down the branches of the great oak tree that dominates the space.

And then her eyes slide down the oak's trunk to the tumbled ground at its roots, and she sucks in a breath, understanding at once why this place makes her want to turn and run. 

She takes a cautious step forward, and then another, and then sinks to her knees a few feet from the base of the tree. Now that she understands, she's not afraid, and she sits there in silence for a long, long time, until at last she realizes that the sun has dipped below the tops of the trees, and she has a long way to go before dark, now that she's found what she was looking for.

Katie hesitates at the edge of the clearing, turning back for just a moment to get one last good look at the place. Something tells her, instinctively, that she won't be able to find this place again; it's not in the nature of the Unknown for all to remain as it once was, after all. So she pauses, making sure she's truly ready to leave before she eventually turns to go. 

She leaves the clearing exactly as she had found it, not one twig or stone disturbed. And, in all the years that wander slowly by, long after Katie has returned home and explained to her family what she'd found, nothing and no one else disturbs the clearing, either. It remains exactly as it was, one tiny fragment of the Unknown which is left in peace.

Just at the base of a great oak tree is a lantern, old and a bit tarnished, with its door hanging open, the light long since gone out. And curled around the lantern, wrapped so tightly around it that it almost seems to have merged with the metal, is an edelwood tree.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Julia and Taurus for betaing. <3
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/akaparalian) and [Tumblr](http://floralegia.tumblr.com).


End file.
